Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to a recording apparatus and a recording method for recording an image on a recording medium.
Description of the Related Art
An ink jet printer has become popular as an apparatus for recording print data such as a text image or a color image transmitted from a host computer, on a recording medium. An ink jet technique has been widely used for various purposes in addition to being used for a printer, or a copying machine. Therefore, there is an increased demand for a technique of executing ink jet recording at higher speed.
In the above-described ink jet printer, high-speed recording has been realized by primarily shortening recording time necessary for executing one time of scanning by widening a recording width recordable by one time of scanning or increasing a scanning speed. In addition to the above-described method of increasing a recording speed, Japanese Patent No. 3495972 discusses a method in which a plurality of recording units is arranged, and recording is executed by sharing a recording area with the recording units. The recording apparatus described in Japanese Patent No. 3495972 includes a left-side recording unit for recording a left-side recording area and a right-side recording unit for recording a right-side recording area. Then, ink tanks of respective colors of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (CMYK) corresponding to the left-side recording unit and ink tanks of respective colors of C, M, Y, and K corresponding to the right-side recording unit different from the ink tanks of the left-side recording unit are mounted thereon.
As described above, the recording apparatus described in Japanese Patent No. 3495972 executes recording on a right-side area and a left-side area of a recording medium by using the respective recording units. Therefore, if ink of any one of ink tanks (i.e., respective four pieces, eight ink tanks in total) provided on the right-side and the left-side recording units is consumed, it is not possible to continue recording operation. Further, a user is not always in a condition where the user can replace the ink tank.